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Beans in Gravy

A dish of boiled beans simmered in butter, flour, onion, beef gravy, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Beans in Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the dry flour and minced onion; brown slightly.

  3. Stir in the beef gravy or soup stock, and season with salt and pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cold boiled beans and simmer until heated through.

  2. Finish with a squeeze of lemon juice before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + beanstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + beanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the flour cook smoothly into the sauce.
Dry flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the butter and liquid.
Beef gravy or rich soup stock
Forms the savory liquid that the beans simmer in.
Cold boiled beans
Make up the body of the dish, soaking up the flavoured sauce as they heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savory sauce.

The step that matters

Brown the flour and onion slightly. Cooking the flour in butter for a short time removes its raw taste and helps it thicken evenly. Browning too far can make the sauce taste bitter or scorched.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, onion, beef, pepper, beans):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, onion, beef, pepper, beans. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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